Investigations & syntheses
Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
Discovered in 1999 at Lomekwi, Kenya, and described in 2001, Kenyanthropus platyops is a 3.5-million-year-old hominin with a strikingly flat face, contemporary with Lucy. Its validity as a distinct genus is debated, but its existence demonstrates the remarkable diversity of Pliocene African hominins.
Read more →Described in 2019 from 13 fossil specimens found in Callao Cave in the Philippines, Homo luzonensis lived on Luzon 67,000 years ago. Its multi-rooted teeth and curved phalanges match no other known species, and its presence on an island with no land bridge raises fascinating questions about the navigational abilities of ancient hominins.
Read more →Emerging in Africa 300,000 years ago, <em>Homo sapiens</em> colonised the entire planet in under 60,000 years. This dossier traces the evolution, migrations, encounters with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and cultural revolution of our species.
Read more →Discovered in Ethiopia in 1992, Ardipithecus ramidus is one of the oldest and most complete hominins ever found. At 4.4 million years old, "Ardi" was already walking bipedally while also climbing trees, challenging our understanding of the common ancestor shared by humans and chimpanzees.
Read more →Between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago, <em>Homo heidelbergensis</em> dominated three continents. Large-brained, spear-hunting, maker of perfectly symmetrical handaxes: this common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans holds a key role in our evolution -- and remains at the centre of one of palaeoanthropology's great debates.
Read more →In 2010, a single finger bone discovered in a Siberian cave revealed the existence of an entirely unknown human species: the Denisovans. Cousins of the Neanderthals, they populated Asia for hundreds of thousands of years before merging genetically into us.
Read more →From 7 to 0.78 million years ago, Africa dried out, savannas spread, and the megafauna of large mammals reached its peak. A world in upheaval that forced hominins to innovate.
Read more →For 1.8 million years, Homo erectus colonised three continents, invented the Acheulean handaxe, tamed fire, and cared for its elderly. This dossier traces the history of the most long-lived human species: its discoveries, anatomy, migrations, and the mysteries it still poses.
Read more →In 2004, the discovery in Liang Bua Cave on Flores (Indonesia) of an adult hominin standing 106 cm tall with a 380 cm3 brain overturned palaeoanthropology. Named Homo floresiensis, the Hobbit is neither a pathological dwarf nor a myth: it is a fully distinct species, the result of island dwarfism on an island isolated for millions of years. This dossier traces its discovery, anatomy, tools, the pathology controversy, the 2016 chronological revision, and its place in a genus Homo tree far more complex than previously imagined.
Read more →From Lucy to the paranthropines: three million years of australopithecine history, when Africa hosted a diverse array of bipedal hominins with contrasting evolutionary fates.
Read more →From Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumai, 7 Ma) to Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, 4.4 Ma), a journey through the four species that open the book of human evolution, long before tools and the savanna.
Read more →For over a million years, a [[hominide|hominin]] with extraordinary jaws coexisted with the earliest members of our genus across eastern and southern Africa. Paranthropus is not our ancestor, but its fate sheds light on what made Homo a success.
Read more →In the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain, a simple railway cutting opened Europe's richest prehistoric site. The Sima de los Huesos, the 'pit of bones', yielded the remains of 29 individuals aged 430,000 years, offering a unique window onto humanity before the Neanderthals.
Read more →Discovered in 2003 in Liang Bua cave (Indonesia), Homo floresiensis stood barely a metre tall. Tiny brain, stone tools, hunting of dwarf elephant: this island cousin upends everything we thought we knew about human evolution in South-East Asia.
Read more →From Peking Man to the bronzes of Sanxingdui, from Yangshao painted pottery to Shang oracle bones: a 25-minute journey through one of the longest and most diverse regional prehistories in the world.
Read more →On 24 November 1974, in Ethiopia's Afar, Donald Johanson unearthed a 3.2-million-year-old australopithecine. Lucy forced an unsettling truth: walking upright came long before the big brain.
Read more →From Sahelanthropus tchadensis (−7 Ma) to Homo sapiens, the human lineage is not a straight march but a dense bush populated by australopithecines, paranthropus and a dozen Homo species that coexisted, migrated and sometimes interbred. A complete tour of every known species.
Read more →From stooped ape to upright human, in single file: it is the most famous image of human evolution. It is also one of the most misleading. Decoding a stubborn visual myth.
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